A former Rural Woman of the Year says it's time livestock groups united to spruik how much they love animals.

Sue Middleton is a cropping, citrus and pig farmer in Western Australia, who won the leadership award in 2010.

She's spoken to hundreds of conferences around Australia and she found most people had not the first idea of how animals are raised.

She's drawn her argument from Charlie Arnott's US Centre for Food Integrity, who says 'They don't care how much you know until they know how much you care!'

Ms Middleton found that consumers can't absorb more scientific evidence about animal husbandry, but love seeing pictures of farmers cuddling their pigs or cows.

"Having shared values is much more important than demonstrating competence," she said.

"We haven't told them why we care for the animals.

"Sometimes the consumer gets the story that organics are better, or free range is better.

"There's a trade-off in every production system and we're actually working on the whole health of the animal, and so our care for the animal comes from a deep desire to see the animal live a good life and a life of dignity, albeit the fact that you send them to sale, but you have to come to terms with that.